11/06/09 - When French Women Cook
We had been neglecting one of our favorite cookbooks, Madeleine Kamman's When French Women Cook: A Gastronomic Memoir
. Some of this is because a lot of the dishes call for a full cup of heavy cream. For example, the pizza like dish to the right is the Alsation version of pissaladiere. That's 3 lbs of onions in the topping along with a half a stick of butter, a full cup of heavy cream, and two ounces of prunier d'agen to give it a little kick. Those are bacon bits on top. Needless to say, one slice went a long way.

Flammkuche

Noisette of Pork with Prunes

The dish to the left is a bit lighter. It is from Touraine. We sliced up a seven pound pork loin from Heritage Foods into slices and seared them in butter. That part was simple. We soaked 30 or 40 prunes overnight in a bottle of red wine, then cooked that wine down, without the prunes, to a mere cup or two. Then, in the typical French manner, we made the sauce in the pan we used for cooking the pork so we got all the cooked meat flavor. We added a cup of heavy cream, then a cup or two of veal stock and the cup or two that was left of the prune wine. Then, we cooked that down to a cup or two. Nearly six cups of liquid were cooked down to perhaps one and a half. That's why they call it a reduction, and it was a wonderful reduction with the pork and prunes.